Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The main beneficiaries of Esélykör are: people with disabilities living in Székesfehérvár, non-governmental organizations dealing with disability issues, non-governmental development organizations, Székesfehérvár City (local government). The member organizations of Esélykör have significant expertise among deaf and hard of hearing people, people with reduced mobility, people with visual impairments and citizens with mental disabilities.

Co-creation process

Esélykör’s main activities are:
  • Sensitizing society to the problems of their disabled peers.
  • Providing services to citizens with disabilities in Székesfehérvár.
  • Contributing to the employment opportunities of the disabled people in Székesfehérvár through organizing joint programs and operating information channels.
  • The members of the network work together to promote their interests through Esélykör.
The main innovation of Esélykör is that it has orchestrated strong cooperation among NGOs supporting people with disabilities in Székesfehérvár, and because of this bond it is able to facilitate a prosperous collaboration with the local government, to represent and act for the interests of the citizens it represents. Esélykör has an effect on the involved non-governmental organizations as well through the Civil Centre Foundation’s (CiCE’s) development activities. The municipality, although being an informal network, mentions Esélykör in its strategic documents and its funding has a separate line in the city budget. Esélykör is a bottom-up, voluntary and spontaneous innovation network, operating as an informal network at the moment. Esélykör can be interpreted as a centralized network with CiCE at its core as a NAO (Νetwork Αdministration Οrganization).

Digital Transformation Process

This case study is not about a digital transformation process, but about social innovation.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

As a result of the activities of Esélykör, disabled citizens of Szekesfehervar are able to defend their interests more effectively, and organizations working for people with different disabilities have a cooperative attitude instead of their previous competitive approach. Not only can their services deliver greater coverage, but also the organizations’ tasks and operations become more efficient and transparent. Communication with non-professional organizations (municipalities, companies, the general public) has improved as well. The network is able to use municipal resources more efficiently along the designated goals (e.g. social sensitization). NGOs are able to respond more flexibly to social needs by working in a network. The network can utilize the capacities of all organizations in a synergic way, so it can respond better to unexpected situations. The network has greater social embeddedness than the individual organizations themselves, so they can act more effectively to assert their interests.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

The general management knowledge and the legal knowledge of small NGOs are insufficient, their objectives are not coherent and consistent. Their internal communication is ineffective, it is often full of conflict. Due to lack of management knowledge and internal conflicts, the civil sector is not credible to other actors of the economy. If they are not able to articulate their goals (social impact), then it is not worth working with them. There is no consensus-based social vision, this way there is no strategy. While NGOs compete for scarce resources, which may be good in certain cases, they do not develop a culture of cooperation. The barrier to municipal and civil cooperation is that the municipality can only cooperate with a non-governmental organization that is legally registered. However, this entails significant costs and time, meaning that the transaction costs of cooperation for many civilians outweigh the benefits. These self-organized civil groups are not enter collaboration with the municipality in a network system.

Transferability & Replicability

Based on the effective operation of Esélykör, the municipality would like to initiate similar processes among NGOs of other professional areas to establish networks and to take over complex social services from the municipality. It also shows that the Municipality wants to launch a planned, top-down innovation process, based on the experiences with the bottom-up innovation process of Esélykör.

Success Factors

The city (local government) saw the value of working with NGOs in the delivery of public services, but also realized that communicating with them separately would create an inefficient system and therefore supported the establishment of the network. The city administration visits Esélykör’s event regularly. They also support the communication of the network, which is beneficial to both actors, as of course this also serves political purposes. The administration listens to Esélykör’s suggestions, integrates them into its strategies in so far it is possible, and contributes to their implementation as well. European Union grants and funds also support network based operation models, as these organizations alone do not have the capacity to prepare, submit and implement large and complex projects. Non-governmental organizations cannot take over complex public services from the local government, while a network of NGOs is able to do so. Everyone can put their best knowledge, experience and resources into this network, and build a comprehensive, complex service portfolio.

Lessons learned

The success of the network is largely due to the activity and coordination capabilities of the network administration organization (NAO), the CiCE. The structure of the network, the presence of a NAO, contributes significantly to the efficient and effective functioning of the network, which is why we consider innovation primarily as structural innovation. The professional work of neither the local government nor the individual NGOs has changed radically, but they have become more efficient and effective.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The main beneficiaries are the students of the university. The university has three campuses in Hungary, which are located in Budapest, Orosháza, and Székesfehérvár. It has full-time, part-time, and distance education programs, primarily at BSC level, however, some MSC programs and further education short programs are also offered mainly on the field of humanities and management, both in Hungarian and English. Inner stakeholders are the university leadership and staff. As an outside stakeholder, the Hungarian Accreditation Committee can also be mentioned, responsible for the accreditation process of all Hungarian universities, mostly because of its expressed interest in the SD development concept.

Co-creation process

The university engaged with the SD development project inspired by an SD workshop of the consulting company. The company brought its expertise on SD-based assessment and service-improvement and through the project they refined their tool for the university. The lead consultant educated the university leadership about the SD concept and reported the results in written reports and presentations. The project measured students’ LX with an SD methodology-based questionnaire (created and validated in previous research and updated after the first data collection) and provided an overview through customer satisfaction index (CSI) and net promoter score (NPS). Students were asked about the importance of certain touchpoints as well as how good their experience is with those touchpoints. Additionally, open questions were also offered to gain further insights. After the 2017 data collection, an SD workshop was organized with four groups using inspirational board, montage, and value proposition canvasing. Results of the assessment were brought further and got implemented by the Welfare Cabinet that involved students mainly from the student board.

Digital Transformation Process

Not applicable.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

Survey results provide feedback for teachers and staff at the university. Educational material about SD, the questionnaires, and the survey reports are accessible via the Moodle system for all the teachers and university staff. The reports had been discussed in meetings of several departments as well. Changes have been implemented based on the 2017 survey, including:
  • Thematic weeks: The new thematic week system (previous educational innovation) was not at all well taken by students: it was perceived as meaningless and forceful, not taking into consideration students’ working life outside of the university. The concept of the weeks was completely redesigned.
  • Distance learning programme: Many students choose the university because of its distance learning programme, however, they got more and more dissatisfied with several features of the programme. While earlier online materials available for full-time and part-time students had been separated from those available for participants of distant learning programs, this limitation was lifted and online consultations had been recorded. The university plans to produce more pre-recorded and edited online materials in the future and has already organized Skype training for teachers.
  • Administrative services: Based on the results both the Study Office and the Welfare Cabinet revised some of their administrative processes.
The 2019 report contains a comparison to 2017 results. The overall, institutional-level NPS changed from -9 to +18, while NPS for the second degree also changed from -12 to +10.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

The primary problematic aspect was the scarcity of free time for workshops and further investigation that could give explanations for the survey results received. Difficulties in the inclusion of educators in the problem-solving process are quite problematic, as the essence of the method can get lost if not every party is represented and engaged in the process. However, some colleagues of the university feel the project unnecessary and expect the consulting company to solve the existing issues. The survey fill-out rates are to be improved for better overview and engagement.  A challenge during the implementation process is that students’ expectations are controversial: while they demand practical approaches in education, they often resent creative tasks and group works, making it unclear how to step forward in this question. The deeper involvement of students might start a tendency of complaining, thus, it is very important to “direct” these co-creation events so that they contribute to development, keeping a positive and proactive stance. If the opinion of smaller groups gains more attention, it might lead to a bias – this should be avoided, too.

Transferability & Replicability

The initial assessment has been repeated in 2019 at the university and the continuation of the development process is expected. As the consulting company’s LxLab (Learning Experience Lab) service is dedicated to educational Lx projects, further cooperation of the higher education sector and the business sector is possible.

Success Factors

One of the main success factors is the engagement of the university’s leadership, especially the vice-rector for education, who acted as an initiator and owner of the project. Another important factor was the trustful relationship between the vice-rector and the lead consultant. The external professional expertise and the internal organizational support for change, carried out mostly by the Welfare Cabinet leader, were a great combination to make focused improvements in students’ Lx happen.

Lessons learned

Through the project and the SD methodology, the university learned about hidden aspects of students’ learning experiences, enabling university staff to come up with improvement ideas they had not been able to do themselves. The project itself points to the importance of a dedicated and united leadership front that can engage and include the staff and studentship of the university and an external partner that is familiar with impactful service development methodologies but are familiar with the sector’s unique characteristics and context. Quick wins regarding first implementations also seemed to support the continued commitment to the project.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The beneficiary of this project part was the University of Szeged, with four local schools recruited as pilot sites. Schoolteachers and school nurses are considered as the key stakeholders in promoting health in primary education. Participation in the pilot was considered as extra-hour work for them, with additional remuneration. The target group of the program was 8- or 9-year-old children, however, we can consider their parents as a secondary target group as their involvement was one of the cornerstones and distinctive attributes of the health club. Service users were not involved in the preliminary design processes, their feedback at the end of the club meetings was the way they contributed and got involved in the shaping of the current and later health club activities.

Co-creation process

The project consisted of the following steps. University researchers began the development of curriculum by reviewing literature and available evidence. It was decided that a workbook would be the central “organizing force” of the activities. It was clear that the workbook had to be designed to fit pupils’ and parents’ needs (both content and outlook) so that a designer was contracted. Schoolteachers and school nurses as well as students from the medical and district nurse programs were involved in further development activities during six workshops (the last one focused only on the administrative tasks required for project documentation). Those experts who participated in the development process, teachers and school nurses, medical students, school nurse students made a “test-run”: all the assignments had been tried by the experts and educators themselves (for example, children had “fruit names” during the health club, so “fruit names” were used during the trial as well). The health club was piloted at four schools. All of the sessions were visited by an observer (the above mentioned students from the medical and the health sciences faculties), who took notes. Assignments and sessions were evaluated by teachers and school nurses as well as the children. Health-related knowledge of participants were measured before and after the intervention so that the pilot project could have been evaluated.

Digital Transformation Process

Not applicable.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

A pre-post evaluation of health-related knowledge of parents was measured by using a questionnaire. The average score grew from 6.78 to 7.16, however, this change cannot be considered as a significant change. Due to voluntary participation, the preselection of children and parents with better health-related knowledge might have played a role here. While the health club itself was discontinued after the pilot, several assignments are still used by teachers, and some skills acquired or strengthened during the pilot are evaluated positively (e.g. the school nurse communicates with parents more frequently and more easily).

Challenges & Bottlenecks

Due to the voluntary nature of participation, a selection bias occurred in the class: those pupils and parents who had already been more health-centric were more willing to participate. Although the design builds on parents a lot and it is part of its key success factors, it also emerges as a bottleneck: it needs a lot of time and attention from them. This way not everyone can participate, only those, who can attend club activities in the afternoon on a weekly basis (e.g. working parents with less flexible schedules have difficulties). The sustainability of the programme is mostly endangered by the required high resource use: the programme is quite time-intensive from the perspective of both parents and the school staff. It requires preliminary trainings and week-by-week preparation from school nurses and teachers. This amount of after-school activity for 8 consecutive weeks is quite difficult to manage for parents as well. Even though kids enjoyed the activities and did not regard the club as an obligation, it was a serious commitment from all the other parties.

Transferability & Replicability

The main outputs of the project are a workbook and an accompanying teachers’ manual (as well as additional materials, like evaluation sheet, leaflets, “key messages to parents” sheets, or a further education short program for school nurses). As intended, any school would be able to reproduce the program based on these materials. However, there was no school continuing or reproducing the program after the pilot. The main reason for this seems to be connected to the high resource use the program requires.

Success Factors

The development process was very user-centric and relied on expertise about how to communicate with children (strengthened by the participation of a service designer). This way, the program was tailored to the needs of children (and parents). On the other hand, the pilot was not followed by a wider-scale implementation (see Challenges).

Lessons learned

The main innovation of the programme was the inclusion of parents in health education activities in schools. It is rare that the children and their parents spend time together in school; this feature of the health club had an immense positive impact on the success of the programme by creating a safe atmosphere for the kids at school and engaging them at home, too. It also strengthened child-parent relationships by spending focused quality time together and creating common experiences. The situation was also new for school nurses and teachers because of this model, however, the novelty of the applied interactive methodologies provided a source of innovation for their practices. However, there was a selection bias: those children (and parents) who wanted to participate in the pilot had already been interested in living a healthy lifestyle, and had already deeper knowledge about health. High-risk groups (e.g. children struggling with obesity) were not participating. Moreover, the sustainability of the programme is endangered by the required high resource use: the programme is quite time-intensive from the perspective of both parents and the school staff.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

Beneficiaries: Járókelő is the Hungarian translation for “passer-by”, it refers to any citizen who is walking by and can be able not only to see an urban problem or malfunction, but also to report it in an easy and efficient way. Other group of beneficiaries are the local governments and other service providers (e.g. public transport companies). Járókelő has now more than 40 volunteers, mainly from the younger generation. There are monthly meetings for the volunteer administrators/ case managers.The association developed a volunteer recruiting and selection process in 2018.

Co-creation process

Járókelő created a fully citizen-centric and community driven internet-based service to strengthen active citizenship, democratic participation, and improve urban management. Járókelő is a mediator between civilians and authorities, so basically it created a new process for collecting and sending complaints, which had an impact on the whole system of fixing street problems. The employees of local municipalities tend to use their map application on the jarokelo.hu website. There are some local governments that indicate jarokelo.hu for citizens as their official forum of reporting street problems.

Digital Transformation Process

The innovation Járókelő realized is complex and practice-based (bricolage). The solution included not only the internet platform, but a process design, knowledge base, marketing and organisational innovation. By its digital solution Járókelő partly substituted prior co-production practices as well as some of the functions of the public organisations. Technology can enable citizen engagement. Platforms like Járókelő and others are tools that can have a positive impact on strengthening democratic institutions, transparency, accountability and foster public participation in public life. Járókelő functions as a bridge between citizens and local authorities in the common need to solve immediate problems in the built environment. As most of the problems reported are easy to fix, local governments can easily give a positive response to citizens.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

Járókelő has grown considerably over the years since it started, nowadays it has reached around 20.000 visitors per month and registers 30 to 50 complaints per day in Budapest alone. Jarokelo has more than 9.000 registered users and more than 25.000 cases solved (as May 2019, approx. 2/3 of the reported cases are sold). Járókelő is often a „speeding lane”, so problem reporters experience quicker response. The positive experience encourages citizens to make further reports. Citizens monitor each other’s report, transparency is growing. The whole venture has not only grown in terms of the number of visits and reports but also in terms of the number of locations in Hungary such as Debrecen, Kecskemét, Veszprém, Szeged and Szentendre, cities that have joined the system. When the platform was launched, municipalities were unprepared for such an engagement, did not fully understand the platform and how it could be beneficial for them. As many of the municipalities lack the capacity of innovation to make their services more efficient and user-friendly, Járókelő can provide a platform that helps their work. Therefore, similarly to many other civic tech platforms, Járókelő can create a win-win scenario, building up trust between local governments and citizens, and improving public spaces. Nowadays Járókelő is more and more accepted as a trusted partner by public service providers.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

Creating the financial background of the association is the biggest risk ever since Járókelő is functioning. Financial resources come from donor organisations (for-profit companies). The Association can plan their budget and operation only year after year. There is a slight risk that the government may introduce a one-stop notification system regarding public complaints, and this way Járókelő could lose its mediator role between civilians and authorities. There is also a little risk, that thanks to technological developments the local governments will have more and more user friendly ways of communication, so Járókelő’s platform may be superfluous. There is also a risk of emerging competitors e.g. a Swedish company trading with crowdsourced online streetmaps. Cooperation with most local governments and public service providers is well-functioning, but cooperation with local authorities has not always been easy. In many cases, municipal offices have been reluctant to cooperate with Járókelő. It really depends on the actual place and the people working in these offices.

Transferability & Replicability

The system can easily adapt to other Hungarian cities. Járókelő plans to develop its system to other Hungarian cities as well, for this they would need other paid coordinators, who could keep the contact with the volunteer case managers on the countryside. So the plan is to increase incomes in order to be able to finance new full-time employees.

Success Factors

Institutional factor: obligation for co-production on part of the public organisations is coded in Act CLXV of 2013 (dealing with complains and public interest disclosures). Even though in Hungary the Act CLXV 2013 deals with complaints and public interest, each city and district deals with them in a different way because the regulations of how to deal with those issues are actually made locally. Járókelő has now more than 40 volunteers, mainly from the younger generation (between 16 and 43 years). They work as web developer and case manager. The volunteers are typically students, free-lancers, have jobs with flexible schedule.  The Association has a well-developed volunteer recruiting and selection process. The IT system is constantly developed and the website is easy-to-use.

Lessons learned

Digital technologies can substitute traditional co-production practices (e.g. remote monitoring or predictive algorithms). The platform of Járókelő provides an easy-to-use technology for citizens, where the reporting users can track and monitor the problem solving process. Furthermore digital technologies can eliminate public sector organisations from co-production (e.g. self-serving communities). The citizens do not need to know which organisation (local authority or a public service provider) is competent to solve a given problem. This knowledge is provided by the Járókelő.hu.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The main beneficiaries of BAGázs live in the segregated Roma settlements of Bag (400 people) and Dány (600 people) in Central Hungary. A survey conducted by the Association in 2017 showed that the local community is far from homogeneous and the households vary greatly from one another, but the fundamental characteristics of segregated areas still fundamentally define the lives of the communities. Less than half of the adults living in the slum have not finished primary school. Of these, one quarter are most likely illiterate, having failed to complete even the first two grades. It is presumably linked to the low level of education that despite nearly half of slum residents having regular work, the average net income is 227.54 EUR (72,000 HUF) per months, and in some families, due to the high number of children, per capita income is far below average. The most pressing problem in the Roma slums in Bag and Dány today is the spreading and pervasive use of designer drugs. The work of BAGázs extends beyond the segregated settlements to the local village communities and to the level of society. The Association build relationships and cooperation with local institutions: local governments in Bag and Dány, kindergarten and primary school in Bag, family and child welfare services, police. ‘Parent Group for Our Hometown’ (SzöSz: Szülői Összefogás Szülőfalunkért) is a citizens’ initiative in Bag. They work with BAGázs from Summer 2018, and they play an important role to getting to know and accept the Work of BAGázs in the village. One of the most important aspects of BAGázs method is the high number of committed volunteers supported the professional work. In the beginning (2011) yearly 20-30 volunteers supported the professional work, in 2018 they have more than 100 volunteers per year.

Co-creation process

BAGázs is working to eliminate socio-cultural disadvantages of Roma people living in these segregated settlements. This can only be achieved if they jointly set up changes in the community of the settlements and in the majority society. The Association seeks to make the Roma people more capable, while at the same time sensitising and making more accepting the people belonging to the majority society. The program structure consists of 8 programs: mentoring for children, free-time activities, summer camp, women’s club, legal clinic and debt management, job hunt, adult education program, mentoring for adults, family consultation. The programs are based on local needs, so they are constantly evolving and adapting to the community. Most of the programs are organised by volunteers, so they are directly involved in professional work. The development of the BAGázs method is the result of a multi-year learning process that resulted in a complex program structure based on holistic, multi-level approach. The learning process is very reflective and conscious based on continuous assessment of experiences and results. Some program elements were largely modified during the last years (e.g. mentoring), and some elements have been omitted (e.g. small garden program or sport program). During the planning and implementation of the different programs the BAGázs Association interact with many stakeholders (e.g. donors, local public institutions, local civil organisations). Many of them play a crucial role in the co-planning and co-production of the programs.

Digital Transformation Process

Not applicable.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

BAGázs started a social enterprise in 2016, which can be a useful additional element to the core activity of the association. BAGázs Bazaar consits of a mobile and a regular charity shop and a community centre in Budapest.  In Bagázs Bazaar they do not only recycle used clothes but are also able to provide job opportunities to people from the settlements. This way they can gain experience and prepare for entering the labour market. BAGázs Bazaar is also a Community Centre. By opening a community space in Budapest, the Association is broadening the horizon of the volunteer work, while providing further programs for underprivileged children. Main results in numbers:
  • permanent presence in 2 Roma settlements (Bag, Dány);
  • a complex program structure consisting of 8 programs for children and adults, 75% of families in the slums participated in these programs;
  • 15 paid employees (9 full-time, 6 part-time employees);
  • in 2018 more than 100 volunteers are trained and involved in their programs to bring new patterns to the closed communities;
  • more than 200 Roma participants.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

The public social service system in Hungary is very fragmented, the colleagues of public institutions in this sector (e.g. case managers of the Guardianship Offices) are often overburdened, the prestige of social work is low, and therefore the lack of appropriate professionals is typical. The long-term finance is also a crucial question for the Association, they try to find more regular supporters. The relationship with local governments in Bag and Dány is not always supportive. Manifestations of antigypsyism, including hostility, prejudice and discrimination specifically directed at Roma combined with stereotypical portrayals of Roma constitute the predominant narrative in all majority society.

Transferability & Replicability

Together with the local social care system and municipalities, the BAGázs is working to solve problems together. As an independent NGO, the BAGázs feels responsible for addressing systemic issues and making changes in related professional areas. Presenting in the press and social media in order to gain more publicity and at the same time strengthen the potential for change within the Roma community.

Success Factors

The BAGázs supports entire families through individual and group programs. In the last years 75% of the families in the slums participated in these programs. There are also employees of BAGázs living in the segregated settlements. Their training and development demonstrates the potential and credibility of change not only for individuals but for the community as a whole. Communication between the non-Roma residents in the villages and the segregated Roma communities is being strengthened, with the aim of presenting everyone’s point of view and providing a basis for co-planning and co-operation. Volunteers participate in the on-site professional work on a weekly basis. The personal and ongoing contact with Roma people gives the volunteers a deeper understanding of the complex problem, and also the personal experience of obstacles makes volunteers more sensitive, receptive.

Lessons learned

The innovative approach of BAGázs method is based on voluntary and bottom-up processes. During the planning and implementation of the different programs the BAGázs Association interact with many stakeholders (e.g. donors, local public institutions, local civil organisations). Many of them play a crucial role in the co-planning and co-production of the programs. The development of the BAGázs method is the result of a multi-year learning process. This process is very reflective and conscious based on continuous assessment of experiences and results. The BAGázs method can be interpreted as an interactive process of innovation.